The Politics Behind the Roleplay
Contributed by Ali Abbas and Assia Boundaoui
Tom MacMaster and his wife Britta Froelicher. This picture was in a Picasa album titled "Syria/It's THE BEST!" This picture was is in the same album that contained the nine pictures Amina Araf sent to a friend. (NPR's text)
In a queer turn of events it has been exposed that Amina Arraf, known to most as the “Gay Girl in Damascus” is no more than a contrived Orientalist avatar of one 40-year-old white man from Georgia, Tom MacMaster. The first words that came to mind upon hearing the news, were “ILAAN KOS…” but we’re trying to refrain from wasting our indignation on curses (albeit justified) and re-orient the conversation into a productive analysis of what MacMaster’s hoax means for the position of Arabs in western media.
The Violence of Representation:
More than just speaking for Syrian activists, or Syrian women, or Syrian lesbians, as so many righteous liberal Westerners “interested” in the Middle East so often do, Tom MacMaster, in his own words, “created a voice,” and in doing so redefined what representation means for Arabs in western media – we call it ventriloquism. In creating the “dummy,” Anima, through the blog Gay Girl in Damascus, MacMaster became the mouthpiece for an entire class of Syrian people while denying Syrians (activists/women/lesbians/all of the above) the right to a voice in an already one-sided global media.
In this violent act of representation in which language and meaning was appropriated, MacMaster detracted from the stories of REAL Syrians who risk their lives daily in opposition to the dictatorship of the Assad regime. Not only did the attention received by MacMasters fake blog rob Syrians of their own voice, it put them in danger in a very real way.
MacMaster, in all of his privileged splendor as a straight American white man, appropriated and “outed” his avatar Amina as a lesbian activist, and in doing so put numerous queer Syrians at risk. Writing from a cozy home in Georgia/Edinburgh/Turkey bares no risk, allowing for plenty of slack when it comes to accuracy and accountability. Yet the victims will ultimately not be the MacMasters of the world, the phony bleeding heart liberals, but the people on the ground that Amina fails to represent.
Daniel Nassar, a moniker for a Syrian Lesbian activist, blogged a furious response to the hoax, explaining that MacMaster, “took away my voice… and the voices of many people who I know. To bring attention to yourself and blog…you single-handledly managed to bring unwanted attention from authorities to our cause.” LGBT folk, like Nassar, who have been doing the ground work to better the conditions in which they live now have to combat the overreaching imaginations of gung-ho white men in the West as much as they do the unjust laws and social stigma of their own regimes.
In creating Gay Girl in Damascus and appropriating the identity of a gay Syrian woman, MacMaster violently drowned out the voices of so many Syrians undergoing REAL persecution, and detention for their dissent (and identities) against the brutal regime. As much as MacMaster relishes his role play an Arab lesbian, he fails to realize that the politics arising from that identity are earned through a lifetime of hardship and inescapable pleasures and punishment, not enthusiasm for the romanticism of a region.
Neo-Orientalist Media Titillation
Regardless of whatever lazy apology MacMaster nervously reaches for, Amina was never intended to be a fictional character for the betterment of women or LGBT people in the Middle East. She is a western fantasy intended to arouse and titillate the western sensibilities to feel, not act. This is the ultimate neo-orientalism as it not only re-imagines an existing geographic location, but invents an entire human landscape.
Because the avatar in question is a gay woman, the international media was quick to eat it up, already confirming their notions and desires for how LGBT people and women live their lives in the Middle East. In fact Amina’s story tells us more about the West than it does Syria. The cyber ghost was so easily welcomed by the media and concerned readers because she is symbolic of all the tropes which Westerners use to position themselves as superior interpreters of Middle East society and culture.
One shouldn’t need the sensationalized fictional narrative of a lesbian Syrian woman to affirm the rights of Syrian demonstrators who are being brutally repressed by their governments. But if the goal is to arouse emotion and entertain, then MacMaster has succeeded in proving that the truth about Arabs comes secondary to Western perceptions and feelings towards them.
MacMaster has succeeded in proving that that the truth about Arabs comes secondary to Western perceptions and feelings towards them.
Reaffirming this point is the Washington Post article on MacMaster in which the authors claim that, “the hoax raised new questions about the reliance on blogs, Tweets, Facebook postings and other Internet communications as they increasingly become a standard way to report on global events.”
For Arabs grasping on to the short end of the media stick, MacMaster’s mess is not a nuanced analysis of the importance of fact checking. To the contrary, this is a particular issue that speaks to the agency of Arab voices slowly being drowned out in a world of lazy journalism, and false reaches for objectivity.
The Violent Aftermath
Ultimately MacMaster has aided the Assad regime and other dictatorial bodies of government by confirming what the Arab dictators have been saying all along: that the uprisings are simply a conceived Western ploy. With the creation of the “Amina dummy,” MacMaster has managed to turn anti-revolutionary regime propaganda into truth by providing evidence that certain narratives of the revolution are fabrications of the West. Because this revolution is being fought on a battle field of (mis)information and truth, every single contribution is a decisive battle in which the outcome of an entire people is at stake – something MacMaster should be held accountable for jeopardizing.
The Arab revolutions are not events for the Western gaze to speculate and draw inspiration – they are real lived and often-times bloody moments that shape, destroy and rebuild the lives of living, breathing people.
Equally infuriating is the insincere “apology” MacMaster posts on his blog in which he ironicly echoes the rhetoric of the Assad regime and explains that his fabrication of a person and misdirection of a people was for the greater good. So if we are to take MacMaster’s “apology” sincerely then we are inadvertently embracing his philosophy – the belief that your voice doesn’t matter if you’re a (queer/female/activist) Arab because some white man in American can always write your story better.
Ali Abbas and Assia Boundaoui are New York based writers and freelance-journalists that submitted a blood test and birth certificate to affirm that the above thoughts are their own analysis based on a lifetime of Arab and or queer and or American and or woman identification.
Filed Under activism, bloggers, guest post, queerness
Great response to the ridiculous and shameful Tom MacMaster' hoax.
As a straight white woman who loves and respect the people of the he Middle East I wholeheartly agree with Ali Abbas and Assia Boundaoui.
The irony of the pathetic "apology" issued by MacMaster is too painful to bear! If he was ever honest in his "concern" for gay people in Syria, this man has only shown his orientalist mind set. Shame, shame, shame on you! Arabs and Syrians do not need "friends" like you.
Posted by RevolutionNow | June 13, 2011, 12:45 pm"Arabs and Syrians don't need 'friends' like you"
Exactly! And how many times have queer Arabs created a straight white man in order to "illuminate" a violent international US policy?
Posted by Ali Abbas | June 13, 2011, 1:17 pmFine. Agreed. But a whole lot of people dissed those who questioned Amina's veracity, largely on the basis that the politics of 'her' posts being supposedly contradicted those of the people doing the questioning. Including people linking to this post. Meanwhile, actual Syrians were risking their lives trying to check whether she was abducted or not at the same time as that checking was being trashed by others. I haven't seen any of these people apologise to those who questioned whether 'Amina' was real of not.
A post-mortem deserves that note: who abused those that questioned Amina?
Posted by paul canning | June 13, 2011, 5:55 pmGreat comment, but it should be bear the risks, not bare.
Posted by molly | June 13, 2011, 9:38 pmTom MacMaster is not the story.
http://garplives.blogspot.com/2011/06/when-being-…
Posted by Garporwell | June 14, 2011, 12:39 amThis is a good comment on the topic regarding the individual case and its implications – especially like the Orientalism angle.
There is another piece which looks at the topic from a wider angle, given CENTCOMs plan to use sockpuppet id's for propaganda against the Middle East http://www.newcivilisation.com/home/middle-east/t…
Posted by Karim | June 14, 2011, 8:15 amyour assumptions are so narrow .. literalist, nationalistic, localized, ego-based .. and your language over-wrought … and this reveals a huge lack of wisdom …
watch this play out over the next week … all over the world, the story has become a joke, because everybody already learned the lesson that, as the cartoon says, on the internet nobody knows you're a dog ..
when everybody realizes that all blogs are fiction, that all writers are fake lesbians, INCLUDING governments, we will start to get somewhere that is human, alive, and trusting.
Posted by gregorylent | June 14, 2011, 2:32 pmThanks Greg (which I am sure is short for Gregory) as a fake lesbatron (lesbian robot) I am always happy to know there are still people in the world who have silly notions that identity can be thrown out the window in favor of humanism.
I am not sure what to make of your idea that all govs are fake lesbians but I love it!
Posted by Ali | June 14, 2011, 3:50 pmBecause accounting for whiteness and heterosexuality is a key aspect to understanding privilege.
Posted by Ali | June 14, 2011, 3:47 pmHmm, unconvinced about activists being put at risk by the blog…the link seems fairly tenuous. The government seems too preoccupied with activists, of unidentified sexuality, who are out on the street directly challenging its viscious authority to have a more specialised anti-gay pogrom. And if evidence of the govts brutality is in question, have a look on youtube of those people with their brains hanging out after being mowed down for bravely standing up for their rights. Pretty irrefutable, I say.
Could it just be that those that followed the blog now feel a little bit silly about being conned?
Posted by daniel | June 14, 2011, 5:54 pmI think it was the search conducted by the state dept. and the fact that this broke internationally that has made many Syrian LGBT people upset. The ones I spoke to expressed concerns that their friends and family are using this as an example of how non-hetero sexual identity is a western construction to destroy the east.
A good source on this is Joseph Massad's Desiring Arabs (specifically his chapter re-orienting desire, which we were channeling in our analysis)
Posted by Ali | June 14, 2011, 6:22 pmYou know what is really amusing? The western semiotic and deconstructionist philosophy that is employed to write this blog. Are you sure you aren't an asexual French white male with a cheese fetish? No doubt, your intellectual superiority will win against any tyrannical regime.
Posted by Mary | June 14, 2011, 8:55 pmActually Mary this was written by the upstanding teachings of Algerian and Lebanese in-betweens. Our education is a mix of both systems but our rage is inspired by pure life experience.
I would write it all in Arabic but I assume that you don't read it.
Its kinda ironic that you would assume that this kind of analysis would only be possible through white western education and bodies… you kinda sound like a racist.
Posted by Ali | June 16, 2011, 9:15 amGet over it and stop giving the guy too much credit. It's almost insulting to suggest that this ridiculous incident will have any real bearing on something as big and significant as the Syrian revolution.
Posted by des | June 15, 2011, 3:23 amthanks for overcoming the impulse to impugn social media or sweep this aside as an insulting distraction. appreciated the intelligent analysis. (also extremely offensive was the non-apology for lezgetreal.com, the responsible website.)
sincerely,
alistair cooke of compton
Posted by @fair_seed | June 15, 2011, 4:10 pmthank you so much for reading and hearing our voice!
Posted by Ali | June 16, 2011, 9:15 amThrough the identification with such labels, indeed, she perpetuates their perceived importance to the detriment of all; however, for those who understand the world through a lens clouded with subjective associations, she is representative of a facet of reality: that some who spring from the culture of the West yearn for peace, and wish to change its course.
Posted by wanderer | June 15, 2011, 10:16 pmDoctress, you just summarized it in less than 10 words… bravo!
Posted by Ali | June 16, 2011, 9:17 amDaniel Nasser is a sockpuppet of an English Jew named Daniel Littauer
Posted by Puppet master | June 17, 2011, 12:00 amOne thing that gets lost in all the talk of privilege and so on is that, for those of us who followed the blog, "Amina" always claimed to have it in buckets in Syria:
her Arab family was wealthy, politically and socially connected and so on.
However, in the blog, she was also half-Anglo and the Anglo half was depicted as 'white trash' Appalachians. One grandfather is supposed to have been a senator, the other an alcoholic truckdriver.
Everyone now who is attacking McMasters for claiming male and Anglo privilege seems to be missing that.
Posted by Sam | June 19, 2011, 4:23 pmNice article, and I especially like the point about how MacMaster works out his neo-orientalist fantasies through the blog, masking the voices of real activists of the ground. There is an additional layer to the whole MacMaster hoax—Counter Revolution, as a way of defusing the energy and short circuiting the Arab spring. So, MacMaster poses as a lesbian activist but really speaks for militaristic interests. http://kingsandcabbages.wordpress.com/2011/06/27/…
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